[quote=AzemOcram]I would really like a playful newspaper or maybe the ability to turn on (or off) a tabloid (funny or obscure news) or talk radio station (ability to tune in or off Juanito or Betty Boom).

There are colorful buildings in reality but a vast majority are not so much. So a combination of colorful and dull buildings based on reality would be great. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of proper scale. I want airports the scale of Cities XL as well as Nuclear Power Plants. A twin cooling tower nuclear power plant should NOT be the same size as a trash incinerator waste to energy plant.[/quote]

prepare for disappointment

SimCity 2013 = Like throwing your time and money into a fire.. the up side being EA has your money so you know it is being wasted

I'm more annoyed losing a year on this forum in the stupid pursuit of a game worth the name SimCity than losing $60+ to EA

How important is it to you all for water to be realistic? rain, pools, lakes etc?

I know if has been brought up repeatedly but.. I do think it would be ground breaking if the water was like:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3JSbhgsoGg[/youtube][/quote]

most of you seem to have no knowledge of game design or game physics. realflow and other simulators in 3d software, takes up an awfull lot of cpu usage, and in many respects no computer can simulate these in real time. alot of these are pre rendered frame by frame, and are then compiled together to form a video clip. these simulators are still way ahead of the gaming industry, whether we like it or not.

The only game i know of that made a good example of realtime water, soil and lava flows is "from Dust". look it up on youtube. "From dust", centres the the whole gameplay around a god sandbox. the game is pretty large in size for what content it had. and alot of that is through the sheer amount of intense programming code.

although id love to see games becoming immense due to realism. im afraid no game has really knocked the nail on the head without making these features the main part of gameplay. As simcity5 is a city building game. rivers oceans and lakes arnt the main features within the gameplay element, as building cities are. transport may interfere as priority within the water zones, but i fear that if they did implement such features, that they may lack in the main gameplay of building cities.

putting all of this into account. its about time city builders start giving us some more dynamics within gameplay. Sc5 is implementing the industrial processing chains of building products, which arnt new within the gaming industry. its nice to see it within the city building franchise, but it needs realsim to give these games and extra edge. weather and climate in particular, will indeed dictate how you build cities, and having to overcome seasonal change, whether its dealing with alot of rain causing flooding to hot weather and draughts.

I'd also like to bring up the fact that maxis have already mentioned about the car robot disastor thing, that we saw in sc4. Its disappointing to see this as it isnt realistic nor is it apparant that they are improving the disastor concept. its like their importing in the content from sc4 into sc5 without redesigning it.

all we can do is just wait and see. i just hope maxis improve the franchise in more ways than 1. the online feature in my opinion isnt one. i think they have made a big mistake with multiplayer until they have an existing offline ultimate city builder. im yet to see features that within city building games that really pack a punch. none of them have. sc4 wasnt one either until the modding community got their hands on it.

I'm not expecting it to look like that video, but that is an example of animated water and some fauna for cuteness/sillyness, hallmarks of Maxis games) and I'm also very well aware that Realflow is mostly for creating high quality rendered videos for commercials, TV and movie effects.

But that didn't stop Natural Motion from developing advanced software that can also be used in games. Or Lucasarts and Rockstar from licensing Euphoria and Endorphin.. or other studios from licensing PhysX and Havok. My question is the need for realistic water in games so an efficient API can be developed for games to rock awesome rivers, ocean waves, cloud-formation and movement and precipitation.. if not Sim City.

2. So my point was adding any kind of physics to standing and flowing water, for pools, rivers, water falls and currents.

Which particle hydrodynamics API will become the Havok/PhysX for gas and fluids in games that justifies having a DX 11 GPU that can compute those animations in realtime AND still run a game like Sim City or the Sims [4].

3. I've been posting several GPU acceleration related posts and this could be considered one of them.

I mean the internet doesn't lack for examples.. and some are fairly compelling, but yes, 3D gaming on PC is still rudimentary compared to 2D and specific 3D games that deal with fluids.

Yet there are some games like Portal 2 that are edging closer to the goal of fluid physics as a game mechanic not just pre-computed eye candy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJaVE01i9i8
[/youtube]

As a toggle, 'physics' or rather just not specifically scripted real-time animations could be applied to gases and fluids in this game. If you have not GPU, the default setting would be off, while if you do, like clouds, advanced lighting (meaning shadows and reflections) could be turned, as well more realistic fluid and gas animations.

4. From Dust

IS the example where for an arcade/DL game they did focus on fluid animations that did help that game to be taken somewhat seriously outside of its immediate audience.

I'm hoping that From Dust could be a baseline for Sim City especially if people are going to be encouraged to have random disasters turned on. Not that you'll encounter anything like those kinds of sinking of Atlantis and destruction of Pompei (pyroclastic flows annihilating your towns), seeing that kind of thing happen and the result would be quite excellent.

5. Perhaps I'm just forgetting that this isn't an MMO where Maxis could a, cheat and have a lousy gas and fluid sim running for PCs with graphics cards, b, compute the animations on a server which we're supposed to be looking forward to connecting to and communicate the computed/simplified animations to end users.

6. "... these simulators are still way ahead of the gaming industry, whether we like it or not."

Personally I believe this to be a myth like Fluoride in the drinking water because while some people only have 1 2.4ghz single core CPU.. other people have several more threads to play with. If the game is designed for 3.0Ghz + quad core 64 bit systems WITH a dx11 gaming video card (since the concept of dedicated physics cards is dead in the water).. Chahi's group at Ubisoft Montpellier (and Related Designs and Blue Byte who do recommend quad core, don't yet recommend dx11 cards that can offload physics from the CPU), could have very impressive next generation tech to play with right now.

They could create Sim City killers with From Dust (which is what I was expecting) and Anno which just needs to be scaled up and focus more on the cities versus supply chains and fighting. OR new IP if those two don't resonate with the console crowd.

So I'm going to go with at least this part of your post is you being rhetorical. Because as good as From Dust is as an example.. it isn't exactly a AAA game, or on a large enough scale (vaguely similar to Anno's islands in that way) or well simulated beyond being amusing/functional.. and little more needs to be said.

7. "although id love to see games becoming immense due to realism."

Huh? I'm not going to say you're contradicting yourself, and for the most part scale of the environment isn't the problem but the quality of the physics being simulated. From Dust was designed for consoles, with severe RAM restrictions and old GPU. So a large part of the PC community could have that same experience, but better, if it wasn't just directly ported to PC for Steam users.. so scaled up either in environment size, graphics quality, or bettering the physical simulation set by that game, better fluids, flow physics, fire propagation, versus being a cute commercialized tech demo. Like Spore, it bugs me that From Dust isn't repackaged by the studios and remade for gaming systems with more processing power. But if it takes a x10 processing power boost to achieve meaningful fluid hydrodynamic simulation in a game like Sim City where hopefully there will be rivers and dams and oceans waves.. then yeah.. I'll keep waiting for the hardware to catch up.

While you've hit the nail on the head for the aspect of Railroads that irked me the most. Firaxis decided to go 3D all the way but made the rest of the game accessible.

Where they could have evolved gameplay from the original games that included flooding, erosion, and deterioration of the infrastructure the player was responsible for.. no it was all plop and forget EXACTLY like Sim City:SMOG is being described. I wouldn't be surprised if water plants didn't degrade over time.

But not simulating the flooding, erosion and flash washing away of infrastructure ISN'T being true to the game itself which is supposed to be a Simulation of running a city and dealing with (or causing) disasters. If the city next door couldn't create dams and ruin my crop lands, or break that dam then flood my town.. in theory at least the game is a poor simulation of the real world.

If cheapo roads in flood prone areas didn't deteriorate visibly and functionally faster than in an idealistic area.. again.. functionally the game isn't living up to being a simulation even if it is just a cheap cash grab of a video game based on a series that traditionally pushed people to upgrade their computers to make the most of previous versions of the game in the series (which I know, without the 5, Maxis is covering their butts).

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 04/29/2012 21:18:59

SimCity 2013 = Like throwing your time and money into a fire.. the up side being EA has your money so you know it is being wasted

I'm more annoyed losing a year on this forum in the stupid pursuit of a game worth the name SimCity than losing $60+ to EA

Games have a nifty trick at cheating people in seeing life like affects.
clouds, gas and smoke tend to be low particle emittors with a texture map attached.
this technique has been used within the gaming industry for many years now, and i doubt this will change. it still works perfectly well as a technique within the next gen games.

fluids, on the other hand is a whole other ball game. having got a degree in games design, and using 3ds max to blender and real flow. it takes me a long time to animate complex water animations. all animations i have experience with, have to be pre rendered, or animated into a timeline. then it can be played back, as a video clip. this technique is fine within games, when nothing can be interfered with, and everything is scripted.
the problem occurs when you wish to interfere with these animated particles.
this is why i brought up 'from dust'. the core gameplay surrounding the game, is all about particles. As a player, you have the ability to interefere with particles in real time. 'from dust' is a pretty large game in terms of data on the harddrive. the game itself is actually pretty linear with very little to do other than mess around with particle flows. having somethign like this in Simcity would be very difficult because its not part of the core gameplay. city building and sim animation is.
the point im trying to make is that games struggle to have this element without being the main form of gameplay. For a city builder, water isnt a core gameplay element.

in most games, water is pre animated on a plane. along the plane can be several layers of texture maps, which are animated along the plane. some games implement particle emittors that are linked along the plane surface. the texture maps are then attached to these particles that get animated. its how the game engine falls the player in seeing waves and currents in an ocean when infact there isnt.

The havok simulator in 3dsmax has little potential for water, because it doesnt look realistic enough. thats because a flat plane has to have a high polygon count. the plane used as water doesnt contain particles which dont give realistic effects such as spray or complex movement such as currents and rolling waves. putting that aside. yes the havok engine could well be implented in a game like simcity. the problem is that you still dont gain realtime currents affected by gravity, such as waterfalls and or river rapids. this means your stuck with just a stagnant body of water like a lake or ocean. rivers, river rapids and fast moving currents arnt ideal, and best done with particles. hense the 'From Dust' example. the havok engine has to pre animated into a timeline also, dispite having a realtime preview.
you also have to remember that the player must be able to dynamically change the map terrain affecting water bodies, in realtime. making water move down a hill side or over a cliff like a waterfall, has to be done via particles.

That's the thing.. I'm hoping certain things will change, one of them is Euclideon should something prior to E3, or more 3D web games that have physics as primary components in game play versus just being tricks. To bring praticles in appreciable volume ahead of textures and tricks do make simple games more realistic.. no need to try to simulate the sinking of the titanic in Sim City to get there.. fish in streams that flow and divert in realtime.. and flood is a start to break away from classic animation and modeling.

But the cost of powerful gaming hardware can only be justified by games that push those limits. Even if that means certain options as toggles for people trying to make the most of their games.. versus playing the game on limited platforms like tablets, consoles and laptops (which would make Sim City portable and available).

Particles systems are still just used for trcks versus being a pervasive element in physics modeling for games.. GTX 690 gets announced and on one hand I can't fathom what besides shooters people will be doing with them.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/01/2012 00:54:49

SimCity 2013 = Like throwing your time and money into a fire.. the up side being EA has your money so you know it is being wasted

I'm more annoyed losing a year on this forum in the stupid pursuit of a game worth the name SimCity than losing $60+ to EA

that cry engine clip you linked had a few nice little features. shame the water still looks horrible though. they even tried to add particles to the crest of waves but i didnt see anything. lol.
the thing is. water is the most complex feature for any animation, whether its games or film. the cry engine still uses a plane which moves its surface to give the impression of water. unfortunately, it looks dreadfully unrealistic and doesnt interact with land. it simply moves under the terrain as if its not there.
things like ocean currents driven by cry engine, isnt possible. the only way to do it is using particles. which are driven by the tides, meaning the height of water will increase and decrease in areas making particles flow in particular directions. particles can show the comparison between the two by flowing backwards and forwards down/up a river for example. high polygon planes just cant do this. stuff like flooding and tsunami's are non existant for the cry engine. however, i did like the waterfall eyecandy affect within that clip. that did indeed look realistic. its a shame it wouldnt be dynamically possible to change it during gameplay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEubhc8RjTk&feature=related
this clip shows a real flow simulation.
to explain it simply. at the timestamp of 0:12 to 0:17 the crest starts to rollover the entity below. high polygon planes find this impossible to create without physically breaking up, and looking terrible, with many fractures.

the difference between cryengine and any simcity game is being able to change the geology of the terrain in realtime during gameplay. the cryengine was made to produce maps which are pre determined for concrete gameplay. this means that during any FPS game. the terrain cannot be changed, unless its scripted within a level. again its a pre determined environment, which cant be changed.
within simcity, the engine has to be flexible during gameplay. this means that if you have built up a city in the centre of the map, and theres no existing lake for example. the player can immediately just terraform the landscape a place a lake where he/she wishes, during gameplay. the cry engine was simply built for a different style of game.

for simcity they need to implement 3 different things for water to work. high polygon planes for oceans, and large lakes. particles which react with coastal areas as well as rivers, streams and waterfalls. the last thing is directional line restraints. line restraints are simply lines drawn into the water areas that show directional affect of water. particles within a certain radius of a line restraint will be drawn towards it. the line is directional so this means particles will follow the lines accordingly creating currents within water bodies.
things like boats and ships, even debri can be influenced making it harder or easier for them to travel. thhis is great for thing like pollution or oil spills.

http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/open_house/gulf.gif
http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/ocean-current-map-631.jpg
these links above show directional currents within the worlds oceans. like i mentioned above, particles will be drawn towards these arrows or directional line restraints causing water to move dynamically. for things like streams, particles simply follow directional line restraints dictated by gravity this means the arrow points in 1 direction. this means the lines will always direct the particles toward the point of gravity. for things like tidal rivers. london for example. directional line restraints pointing in 2 different directions at different parts of the day. they can simply be turned on and off during parts of the day making dynamic tides. forexample. morning until noon, the line restraints point north, but in the afternoon to night, they change to point south. this would make water bodies look as if they have dynamic currents. this would be great when influencing naval transport too.

dependant on how simcity5 will be built upon naval transportation. it would be great to dictate waypoints where boats can be directly affected by the currents. if transportation is dictated by time and efficiency, you would want to make sure you follow tidal paths making the journey shorter. the last thing you want is to travel through tidal currents that work against you.
im some circumstances currents maybe too strong and naval transportation isnt the best idea. however for these areas, you could place down water turbines, or dams to produce electricity. maybe only certain types of boats/ships can navigate through strong currents.

to say realism isnt the way forward is just rubbish. it adds far more depth into game play and influences the player to make choices. i just wished some company would take it seriously, and make an awesome city builder with it.

A certain degree of realism is needed but we must be realistic with what a computer can handle. First off, Enodo is the absolute maximum degree of realism possible and Micropolis is the lowest. Hopefully, the lowest quality settings are still comparable to SimCity 4 and the highest quality settings are superior to Anno 2070 (which is very good).

So to some degree not having terrain deformation, destructible buildings etc, fluid hydrodynamics simulation for dynamic waves and currents, and particle systems for clouds and smoke and fire flora and fauna propagation etc... I'm still asking what the point is in making the game [as if versus AoEO, Settlers, From Dust, Catan, CityVille, Farmville] now without those things, even if people are happy with a glorified and over budget Facebook game, instead of simulating the [Spore-like] world(s) to nth level of detail so that it can be dynamic while you're playing?

Why did Spore work and haven't we moved on since then? 4-8 gigs of DDR3 (which is in critical oversupply depending on which blog you read) Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge quad core processors, and Fermi HD 5000/7000 cards are affordable. If you cannot get realistic simulation at photo-realistic detail levels don't try.. you can still do it at some level above a Facebook game and so earn the $60 dollars versus gamers sticking with FarmVille and CityVille for free. It is the developers choice which to focus on, graphics that at the end of the day don't matter, or scale and detail of the simulation and how dynamic it is.

So on that other hand, the level of detail doesn't have to be Crysis but comparable or better to Facebook games in real-time, but still modelled to the nth degree compared to Facebook games that are just textures and the player using their imagination.. Taking the game from 1 city at a time to Realm of Empires scale where you can scale your portion of the online empire (if not between planets) to something appreciably larger than a single city, in a dynamic world worth exploring and exploiting [incorporate and co-operate since Sim City isn't a 4x game].

Having the world move under your Sims feet (ever so slowly), modelling earth quakes, Tsunamis, Volcanic eruptions and deadly ash clouds and flows of snow (avalanches etc), floods, sink holes, moving rivers over generations of erosion.. maybe in another 10 years that won't seem impossible because another studio will see it as a priority to focus on that kind of simulation. And won't argue that gamers don't have computers capable of running that level of simulation in real-time with pretty candy like graphics? Once enthusiasm for this version fades, the servers are cold and dead and EA Maxis if they are still around decide it would be worth investigating in SC Online, something like Sim City meets Spore will happen.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/01/2012 12:51:08

SimCity 2013 = Like throwing your time and money into a fire.. the up side being EA has your money so you know it is being wasted

I'm more annoyed losing a year on this forum in the stupid pursuit of a game worth the name SimCity than losing $60+ to EA

in another 10 years time. technology will be for sure, way beyond being able to make realtime water affects and such in games. theres no doubt. Just think how far technology has come in the last 10 years. its booming. the only thing is, we just dont know when it will start slowing down if it already has.

going back onto the topic of having realism in simcity5. its quite apparent their going for a cartoon like affect with their palette, even though most of their video's state that the content doesnt represent the final product. Realism in affect is already out the window with maxis game design. putting this into account, stuff like water, clouds, smoke and so on could very well be a priority. weather or dynamic weather hasnt been mentioned at all and its very doubtful in reality that maxis will go for that concept. as it stands, all we'll get is rain. as for water, we know there will be deposits under ground where water towers and other such facilities can use to consume. this is the same for coal. oceans, seas and lakes with be box standard planes with animated textures attached. going from what ive seen from the stupid car robot disastor thing. it will be exactly the same as SC4's but with better graphics and better animation. i can also quite easily see it being an ability for players to destroy parts of their city for 'fun' if they wish. this is from what i can gather looking at what ive seen.

Nothing i can see is brand new to the industry and most of it seems very similar to sc4. the only difference we're getting is the sim simulation, and industrial process chain of manufacturing products. not to forget the multiplayer element which we're yet to see from a gameplay perspective. im looking forward to the challenge of building products through a chain process, however this element isnt new and has been done before. settlers for example.

im afraid all this squabble about realism, dynamic weather, realistic water and such, will come, but in future products. not sc5. this i have no doubt. if its a city building game or an rts of some type.

I just looked up the minimum system requirements and those sure are the bare minimum requirements. If your computer does not exceed those, you do not deserve to play the game. Even SimCity Societies and Cities XL have higher requirements.

Even it was better than nothing at the time to other City building games. I felt that game was unfinished and bugged. The game was like playing beta game. People still on the CitiesXL website requesting for a patch to fix the game.

I hope that SimCity is complete that it's not a beta looking game. Also Maxis hasn't yet fail in their games for a while.
The videos you see now is showing what to come. The finish project will be much better.

Wait till the end of this year. New videos and pictures will surface and you might be happy in what you see.

I do know that SimCity 5 will be harder to Mod it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/02/2012 13:15:35

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